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Procedural knowledge
Procedural knowledge or know-how is the knowledge of how to perform some task. Know-how is different from other kinds of knowledge such as propositional knowledge in that it can be directly applied to a task. Procedural knowledge about solving problems differs from propositional knowledge about problem solving. One limitation of procedural knowledge is its job-dependence; thus it tends to be less general than propositional knowledge. One advantage of procedural knowledge is that it can involve more senses, such as hands-on experience, practice at solving problems, understanding of the limitations of a specific solution, etc. Thus know-how can frequently eclipse theory. Procedural knowledge in cognitive psychology In cognitive psychology, procedural knowledge is the knowledge exercised in the accomplishment of a task, and thus includes knowledge which, unlike declarative knowledge, cannot be easily articulated by the individual, since it is typically nonconscious (or tacit). For example, most individuals can easily recognize a specific face as "attractive" or a specific joke as "funny," but they cannot explain how exactly they arrived at that conclusion or they cannot provide a working definition of "attractiveness" or being "funny." This example illustrates the difference between procedural knowledge and the ordinary notion of knowing how, a distinction which is acknowledged by many cognitive psychologists (Stillings, et al. Cognitive Science: An Introduction, 2nd edition, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1995, p. 396). Ordinarily, we would not say that one who is able to recognize a face as attractive is one who knows how to recognize a face as attractive. One knows how to recognize faces as attractive no more than one knows how to recognize certain arrangements of leptons, quarks, etc. as tables. Recognizing faces as attractive, like recognizing certain arrangements of leptons, quarks, etc. as tables, is simply something that one does, or is able to do. It is, therefore, an instance of procedural knowledge, though it is not an instance of know-how. Of course, both forms of knowledge are, in many cases, nonconscious. For instance, research by a cognitive psychologist Pawel Lewicki has demonstrated that procedural knowledge can be acquired by nonconscious processing of information about covariations. Procedural knowledge in artificial intelligence In artificial intelligence, procedural knowledge is one type of knowledge that can be possessed by an intelligent agent. Such knowledge is often represented as a partial or complete finite-state machine or computer program. A well-known example is the Procedural Reasoning System, which might, in the case of a mobile robot that navigates in a building, contain procedures such as "navigate to a room" or "plan a path". In contrast, an AI system based on declarative knowledge might just contain a map of the building, together with information about the basic actions that can be done by the robot (like moving forward, turning, and stopping), and leave it to a domain-independent planning algorithm to discover how to use those actions to achieve the agent's goals. See also * Algorithm * Descriptive knowledge * Divergent thinking * Experience * Heuristic * Imperative mood * Information * Idea * Instructional capital * Knowledge * Knowledge level * Knowledge (philosophy) * Memory * Metacognition * Reasoning * Trial and error External links Category:Cognitive processes * Category:Skills Category:Technical communication